1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method, apparatus or software for determining a position of a mobile device.
2. Description of Related Art
Current methods for establishing the location of a mobile device use a variety of techniques. For example, the mobile device may be equipped with a Global Positioning System (GPS) transceiver enabling the device to determine its position independently. The device may then transmit its position data via a GPS beacon or other wireless communications protocol. Another mechanism for locating a mobile device is to fit it with a proximity device such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag, which can be identified when it comes within range of an RFID base station. A further mechanism uses wireless signals received by the mobile device from a set of three or more base stations having known locations. Features of these received signals are then used in a triangulation mechanism to calculate the position of the mobile device.
A problem with RFID tags is that the specialised tag device needs to be added to every mobile device in the system and a corresponding specialised base station is also required. A problem with triangulation mechanisms, GPS or active beacon location systems is that they costly in terms of the limited resources of processor and battery power of the mobile device.